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This recipe is so easy. And it is a healthier alternative to fried chicken. I’ve tried other oven baked fried chicken recipes and they usually involve buttermilk and eggs. This is even easier. It takes just a few minutes to prep, then you stick it in the oven and walk away for a half hour. Brilliant. I also like to make roasted broccoli with it, because it goes in for the exact same amount of time and temperature as the chicken!

Here’s what you’ll need for the chicken:

– 1 lb chicken breast tenders

– 1/2 cup panko

– 2 tablespoons light mayo

– paprika

– garlic salt

– basil

– spray oil

For the roasted broccoli side you’ll need:

– 4 cups broccoli florets

– 2 tablespoons minced garlic

– spray oil

Preheat the oven to 350. Put the chicken tenders on a plate. Sprinkle them with the paprika, garlic salt, and basil. I also ended up throwing on a little cayenne pepper; you can really customize this to whatever flavor you want. Sometimes I will even sprinkle some hot sauce on the tenders with my spices.

Once I’ve added the spices, I take one tablespoon of light mayo and apply it to the tenders. Once I’ve covered them in a thin layer, I flip the tenders over and add the spices to the other side and then follow with the second tablespoon of mayo

Put the panko into a bowl, then take the prepped chicken and dip it into the panko, making sure both sides get covered. Place into a baking dish, and spray a little spray oil on top.

To prep the broccoli, grab a second baking dish or oven pan and use a little spray oil to coat the bottom. Add the broccoli florets and then add the minced garlic. Now spray a little more of the spray oil on top.

Now everything is prepped and ready. Put both in the oven and set the timer for 30 minutes. That’s it! Delicious and healthier alternative to fried chicken.

I love this meal because it takes such a small amount of effort and it has a comfort food vibe. Great home cooked meal that can be thrown together easily during your busy work week.

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I have become mildly obsessed with my spiralizer. I’ve used it to make several things, but I think my favorite creation is “zoodles” aka zucchini noodles. They are so easy! Plus they are a delicious and healthy alternative to standard noodles. If you are like me and looking for way to cut out more of those tempting carbs, this is a fantastic option. It’s not quite like noodles but the texture and feel when eating them is very similar, plus you get the added benefit of tasty zucchini. My husband loves it and asks me to make it, which is honestly the biggest compliment I can give the dish as he tends to be pickier and slightly more wary of “weird” foods than I am. This is my version of one way a coworker told me she likes to make zoodles. I make it as a one pot meal, but if you want to be fancy about it you could brown the meat separate from the vegetables. I just like an easy meal – I’ve made it both as a one pot and browning them separately and honestly there is little difference. So in the spirit of keeping healthy options simple, here is a step by step one pot option. This will serve roughly 4 people. (Although I like to make it as dinner for 2 then reheat it for lunch for the next few days. Your call)

I like a super thin zoodle, so if you have multiple settings I recommend the smallest cut. Here you can see it collect at the bottom of the spiralizer:

I cut the ends off the zucchini so they are flat, then I halve them so they fit easily into the spiralizer.

I spiralize all the zucchini and put that aside. I chop the onion and the bell peppers, also putting that to the side. Finally, I slice the sausage.

Once I have all the ingredients cut and ready, I put a pot on the stove and spray it with my coconut oil (If you are using standard oil, just pour in about a tablespoon or more into the pot and swirl to coat). I then add the chopped onion and peppers and cook them for about 5 minutes on medium high heat until they start to become translucent. At that point, I add the minced garlic and the sliced sausage.

I continue to cook at medium high heat for about 5 more minutes. I usually end up turning the heat up high and brown it for another couple of minutes – be careful to keep an eye on it so nothing burns, and you just get nice browned edges on your onions and sausage.

Once the mixture is browned to your liking, turn the temperature back down around medium or medium high and add the zoodles. Stir those in with the browned meat and veggies. The zoodles warm and cook pretty quickly – within 3-5 minutes. Zucchini tends to sweat out a lot of moisture as it cooks, so make sure you keep stirring this while it’s on the stove to coat.

That’s it. It’s really easy – basically the only time consuming part is chopping veggies and spiralizing which really takes no time.

You might want to add other vegetables to this, or a different meat, or no meat at all — really the sky is the limit. I personally feel like there is a lot of moisture produced by the zucchini so I don’t think a sauce is necessary. For me, the moisture mixing with the flavors of whatever else you have in there, which then coats the zucchini noodles is more than enough. But feel free to play with this! If you try something different and want to share, please feel free to leave a comment, I’d enjoy learning other things that folks love with these tasty vegetable noodles.

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I just can’t get enough grilled vegetables. Matt and I have made grilled portobello fajitas a few times now and they are becoming a favorite of ours. I’m pretty excited that my husband agreed to try completely vegetarian fajitas, especially since they have these giant mushroom slices. It’s only been very recently that he’s come around to liking mushrooms. Since I love mushrooms I’m pretty excited we get to cook with them more often these days.

You will need a grill pan for this recipe. I guess it would be possible to use skewers, but this seems like a lot of extra unnecessary work. Get yourself a grill pan if you don’t have one – it’s worth every penny.

The ingredients are pretty flexible, but here’s what we used:

– 1 package of sliced portobello mushroom caps

– 1 bell pepper (we used red)

– 1 white onion

– 2 jalapeños (we deseed ours. Once again go by your own tastes, this can be spicy or you could leave them out completely)

– Fajita seasoning (you can buy this as a packet or you if you have this spice in your kitchen you can just add a tbsp or more depending on your preference)

– 2 tbsp oil (we use coconut)

– 2 tbsp vinegar

– 4 tortillas (depending on how large they are, the vegetable mixture could fill more)

– Optional – avocado to add at the end

First you slice the vegetables, keeping them in long thin strips (aka: Julienne). Put the vegetables into a resealable bag or Tupperware. Add the coconut oil, the vinegar, and the fajita seasoning, shake to coat. Place the veggies in the fridge for at least an hour or more to let them marinate. It isn’t crucial they marinate, but it does make it tastier! When you are ready, heat the grill to a medium high heat.

First, grab those big mushroom slices and put them in the grill pan.

Grill the mushrooms until they are soft, they will shrink down some in size. Remove the mushrooms from the pan and temporarily set aside. Add the rest of the vegetables to the pan and grill them.

Once all the vegetables are cooked, add the mushrooms back in to the pan for another minute, just to get them all back to the same temperature.

That’s it… seriously it’s so easy. When we made ours we used the uncooked tortillas (like these) and heated them on a griddle to cook them right before assembly. I also mashed an avocado up to spread on there as well (because I’m extremely addicted to avocados).

Final result may not look gorgeous, but it was so good. And really easy!

Dice the tomato and chop the green onion. Cook the bacon per the directions on the package and then chop that as well. Chop the iceberg lettuce head in half and spray each half with a light layer of oil. Once your grill is up to a high heat, you will put the lettuce halves directly on the grill for about 2-3 minutes. Once you pull those grilled salad halves off the grill (there should be satisfying grill marks), divide them up into quarters. Each quarter gets a happy covering of a couple tablespoons of the lite dressing, and the chopped bacon, tomato, and green onion all over the top. Finally, cut the lemon into quarters and squeeze fresh lemon over the top of your salads.

Depending on what dressing you use it’s reasonably healthy. The bacon is a small amount of naughty in an otherwise low guilt meal. And bacon isn’t that bad as long as your not eating it excessively, in my opinion… For example, check out the nutritional info for a serving of the bacon we buy. One serving is 2 pan fried pieces and as mentioned before, we use 3 slices for this recipe per serving.

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I usually make this in order to meal prep and bring a healthy lunch to work for 4 days (I chop and mix the veggies each day and only precook the shrimp, but you could also just view this as enough for 4 servings). Add or subtract veggies from this recipe per your tastes, but here’s what I do:

– 1 lb uncooked shrimp

– 2 avocados

– 2 cucumbers

– 2 tomatoes (I like the ones still on the vine!)

– head of iceberg lettuce (spinach would also be excellent)

– dressing (I use about a tablespoon of sesame oil, or about a tablespoon of poppy seed dressing per serving. Once again, this can be totally customizable.)

I saute the shrimp, either with cooking spray or a pad of butter if I feel like splurging. Once they are cooked through, I generally sprinkle them with some pepper and garlic powder (no need to go overboard, just a little). Now stick them in the fridge, this is meant to be a totally cold salad. I like to meal plan with this, so I add 1/4 of the total veggies listed above to 1/4 of the cooked shrimp to bring to work for lunch each day. I precook the shrimp, but I chop the veggies each night or morning before work so they don’t get gross being chopped up for too long by the time day 3 or 4 rolls around. When I’ve chopped veggies and added the shrimp to that portion, I drizzle a little dressing on, shake it up… and boom. Delicious, fresh, reasonably healthy lunch!